Canadian pharmacies -- An editorial Thursday erroneously stated that Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Mark McClellan was spending $138 million to, among other things, prevent Canadian pharmacists from selling prescription drugs online to U.S. seniors. The funds in question are controlled not by the FDA but by the Office of National Drug Control Policy.

Seattle Police Chief R. Gil Kerlikowske will face daunting challenges as the next drug czar, Vice President Joe Biden said. As director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, Kerlikowske will help develop a strategy to stem the Southwest border violence, Biden said.

The top U.S. anti-drug official said Afghan poppies would be sprayed with herbicide to combat an opium trade that produced a record heroin haul this year. The Afghan government has not publicly said it will spray, but John Walters, the director of the U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy, said President Hamid Karzai and other officials had agreed to ground spraying.

The Senate, by voice vote, approved Army Gen. Barry McCaffrey, 53, to head the Office of National Drug Control Policy. He has been commander in chief of the U.S. Southern Command in Panama for the past two years. At McCaffrey's confirmation hearing, Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), chairman of the Judiciary Committee, criticized President Clinton's antidrug policies while lauding the general.

Bob Martinez (director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy) in "Morale Is Key to Local Police Fighting Drugs" (Commentary, Oct. 23) may have reached a new high point in the insane rhetoric of the "war on drugs" when he compares the drug traffickers rather than the drug enforcement police to "secret police in a dictatorship." What a role reversal! The tactics of drug enforcement agencies nationwide closely parallel the tactics of the darkest of all totalitarian secret police--infiltration, betrayal, entrapment, midnight raids--you name it, they do it. JOHN A. SCHMIDT Los Angeles

Despite widespread spraying of defoliants financed by the U.S., total acreage of coca cultivated in Colombia rose 19% in 2006 compared with 2005, according to an annual survey by the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. The report stresses that much of the gain may be attributed to an expansion of the area included in the survey, which is done by satellite, airplane and on the ground.

Antidrug efforts should be focused on education and treatment, said Barry R. McCaffrey, director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, a change from recent emphasis on stopping illegal narcotics at the borders. Three-quarters of U.S. antidrug money and time should be aimed at reducing demand, McCaffrey said. "We can have only one priority, and that's motivating American youth to reject illegal substances," the retired Army general said at a luncheon.

A parliamentary committee urged Canada's government to relax its laws on possession of marijuana, an idea that Washington's drug czar branded outdated and dangerous. The special panel on the nonmedical use of drugs said in a report that marijuana should be decriminalized but not legalized. This means people possessing and cultivating less than 1.1 ounces would only be fined if caught.

The City Council voted today to ask federal "drug czar" William J. Bennett to include Los Angeles in a far-reaching pilot program he has announced to eliminate drug crime in the nation's capital. The council voted 13 to 0 to ask Bennett, the director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, to designate Los Angeles as the site of "an all-out attack on the drug problem."